Travis: The leaders to land the best uncommitted recruits

Gus Malzahn and Les Miles will surely land their share of top talent in the 2014 class.

I keep up with college football recruiting, but mostly in a generalized way. That is, I’m not obsessing over individual recruit decisions — I’m watching the overall trend lines of recruiting class rankings.

If you are one of those fans who says, "Rankings don’t matter!" — you’re wrong.

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Every team that won a BCS title had at least three classes ranked in the Rivals top 10 in the preceding four years. So, yeah, they matter.

Right now the SEC has six of the top nine classes and nine of the top 15 classes in the country.

Putting that into context, Ole Miss has the 15th best class in the country but only the ninth best class in the SEC.

Recently I’ve stopped paying much attention to actual player announcements and just checked the 247 Sports crystal ball. If you aren’t familiar with the crystal ball, 247 Sports allows those in the recruiting business to sign up for accounts and make predictions about where recruits will sign.

It’s accuracy rate is pretty astounding.

You can click on the individual predictors and even check their track record.

With signing day one week from today, how many players are still uncommited? And on top of that, how many of the uncommited players truly appear to be in actual recruiting battles?

Not many.

Let’s dive into the 247 Sports database and see where the analysts are predicting each player to go. (Note: The percentage is how "sure" the analysts are in the prediction.)

If you use 247’s composite rankings instead of their individual rankings, here are the other four-stars who remain uncommitted. Every single one of them is considered 80 percent or more likely to sign with a certain school.

196. Chris Lammons, CB

95 percent to South Carolina.

231. Andrew Williams, DE

87 percent to Auburn, 12 percent to Clemson.

245. Raymon Minor, ATH

83 percent to Virginia Tech, 13 percent to Marshall.

263. Poona Ford, DT

80 percent to Texas.

266. Richard Yeargin III, LB

87 percent to Clemson.

301. Daniel Cage, DT

86 percent to Michigan State.

312. Frank Ragnow, OT

89 percent to Minnesota.

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When you look at all these rankings, how many true uncertainies are there? Seven or eight, maybe? Sure, there will be a suprise or two on signing day, but most of those surprises are overrated for television drama.

Remember, the televised hat ceremonies are designed to create a great deal of suspense, drive ratings and allow the kids to have their "moments."

But lots of people know the decisions beforehand, because just about every major decision is already made if you look at the crystal ball percentages on 247 Sports.

Use this as a guideline: In the time I was writing this column, Humphrey commited, as predicted, to Alabama.